


Drown, Drown, Take Me Down

by Aewin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Consensual Violence, Dubious Consent, Loss, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Loathing, Smut, Songfic, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 08:42:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aewin/pseuds/Aewin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elsewhere in paradox space, we examine another timeline where a moment’s difference changes everything. And Sollux tries to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drown, Drown, Take Me Down

**Author's Note:**

> I love Sollux, so I decided to break him for my first Homestuck fic. Comments/criticism highly appreciated as usual. Enjoy my twisted Valentine's present.  
> This is inspired by the song _[Aquarius](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/withintemptation/aquarius.html)_ by Within Temptation. I do not own said song, and I do not profit from this work.

Elsewhere in paradox space, we examine another timeline where a moment’s difference changes everything. And Sollux tries to forget.

 ***

**Sollux: Wake.**

You wake, and wish you’d stayed unconscious. There’s fuchsia blood spattered over your body and on the floor—you can’t see bring yourself to look at it, but you’re acutely aware of what color it is—and you know she’s somewhere near, silent in death. You’re alone. Again. You’re dead inside, you can’t feel anything but self-loathing. It greets you like an old friend, spilling into your mind in a rush.

_Why do you even try? Where did they go, who’s still alive, what do you do now, what happened to Eridan? She said she was fine but you’re not, you can’t be. You won’t ever be, probably never were to begin with, you’re a useless piece of shit and you let everyone you love be taken from you. Fucking despicable._

You hear something nearby, a sort of choked _glub_ , and stand up to seek the source.

“S—Sol?”

You turn and he’s there, holding her and sobbing. He’s staring at you like he’s seen a ghost, but he drops her back to the pile, which emits an incongruous burst of honks. He’s up in a flash and pulling out his wand to finish off the job.

The maelstrom of self-hatred disappears and you’re calm with sudden purpose. _Kill him._

Your psionics flare into existence in a circle around him. You direct them at his torso, a thousand electric daggers calculated to merge exactly where you judge it will be easiest to rip him in half.

_Forward._

A pearly white bubble of light surrounds him now. The light illuminates him dramatically from below, and you can clearly see the half-dry trails of violet on his cheeks. Your psionics spark harmlessly off of the shield. You try it again, and he’s inside that bubble _smirking at you_ , how infuriating. A single massive sledgehammer of power bounces off just as easily. He just stands there pointing his wand at you, cape billowing behind him in the backdraft of the shield. _Fuck. You really are a failure at everything. He even manages to look calm and composed while he’s covered in tears and kicking your ass._

There’s a snapping sound at your throat, and there’s suddenly a collar around your neck. Eridan’s shield melts into a milky-white stream and comes straight at you. You dodge.

Try to, at least. You’re moving in slow motion until the shield has slithered itself into the collar and spread over your body, making your skin shimmer. You can’t feel it, and once you’re covered it disappears like it never existed.

Your psionics vanish, and you panic. You can move again apparently, but all you can do is sink numbly to the floor with the realization that Eridan has just stolen your essence from you, the only thing that set you apart, made you feel like you were worth anything.

Yellow tears begin sliding over your cheeks as he approaches. Before you can process it he’s on you, and you can barely fight back through the disorientation. Eridan’s a swimmer, always has been, so he’s stronger than you physically. You might not have had a chance even if you weren’t distracted.

Eridan’s first punch hits you square in the face with an exaggerated crunching noise, and the mingled product of your blood and tears drips to the floor in a steady trickle. You curl forward into a defensive ball as he kicks you sharply in the gut. His foot’s on your back then, and your face is shoved mercilessly into the cold tile. His foot rests on your back until you stop struggling, and then—nothing. The foot is gone, and it’s quiet.

You push yourself upwards to look for him and he’s on you again. He grinds himself against you roughly and seizes your neck with his teeth, biting a vicious line down to your shirt that makes you cry out with a mixture of instinct and shame. You can feel his bulge against you now, writhing in his pants. You’re suddenly sure what’s going to happen here, and the thought sickens you.

You give in and stop struggling. He’s going to do it either way, and it won’t hurt as much if you don’t fight it.

_It’s a fit punishment for your role in their deaths._

Eridan pulls his wand out and flicks it, and your arms are bound together above your head with a more solid version of the white stuff, whatever it is. He grins at you wickedly as he maneuvers your pants down. They get stuck around your ankles, and he just leaves them, opting instead to step out of his own and scrutinize your body. His proud purple bulge is a bright streak against his ashen skin, and it doesn’t seem he has any qualms about showing it off.

“Beautiful, Sol. Never expected you to be so eager for it though, I’ll give you that.”

You close your eyes. It’s true, your bulges are already out and probing around interestedly. You’re sick. Part of you wants to be punished for being so inadequate, and if Eridan is strong enough to take it from you, he’ll get it.

He lowers himself on top of you again, and this time his bulge finds its way insistently into your nook. It feels good to surrender to it, to feel the slick head parting the folds and plunging itself in. You squirm up against him. He surprises you then, leaning forward to capture your lips in a mockery of a kiss. Your glasses are clashing together awfully and he’s getting a mouthful of your tears and blood. His teeth are shredding your lower lip; he tastes of salt and the sea and there’s a stinging burn when his tongue darts out, like maybe there is actually some salt involved here, being rubbed into your open wounds. And fuck it, you don’t care if you’re sick, you’re enjoying it too. The pain sends jolts of pleasure down through your body, and your bulges move involuntarily against him. They twine around each other eagerly, since there’s nothing else to grab.

Eridan’s eyes widen when he feels them pressing against his stomach. He reaches between you to grasp one firmly—too firmly—in his hand and begins stroking you harshly as he moves inside of you. He’s being too nice for someone that’s supposed to be cleansing you of your sins. You do the only thing you can think of to get him to treat you rougher. Your head rams up into his violently, and the world whites out for a moment. He snarls and shifts position so that you’re both sitting up. There’s another fuzzy white blur as he yanks your hair and snaps your neck back. Any further and it would break. _Yes, that’s what you want. You deserve this._

His pointed fingernails are digging into your scalp and your back, raking angry, oozing welts into your flesh. The thrusts quicken and you can feel him start to lose control. Eridan gives a loud moan and sinks his teeth into your neck again, thrusting roughly a few final times before he’s gone. He pulls out while he’s still coming, splashing your lower half with purple genetic material. A hand wraps around your bulges, stroking them before his mouth replaces it.

Pointed, precision-placed teeth nip you where your bulges join, making you jerk in surprise. His tongue snakes between them, flicking up one only to slide down the other. You cry out, close to the edge, but it only makes him go back to the biting. It’s a painful back-and-forth; you’ll get close, he’ll nip you again, and it happens several times before you realize that the bites are turning you on as much as the tongue does now. When his teeth wrap lightly around a shaft, you’re letting out a choked breath you weren’t aware you were holding. The world whites out in a much different way than before, and you can feel the sharp crackle of psionic energy between your horns as you come.

Something solid connects with your head. White fades to black, and you are at peace with yourself.

***

They find you in an unconscious heap on the floor, covered in splashes of royal and self-loathing. What skin isn’t covered in drying fluids is covered in ugly spreading bruises, and you’re stark naked. The events of the last—how long?—are pretty hard to misinterpret when the evidence is still dripping to the floor in a pool beneath you. Kanaya gives you a disgusted look but gives you a spare jacket from her sylladex; between the tearing and the stains, your own clothes are ruined.

Karkat says he’ll kill Eridan next time he sees him. He’s stunned silent when you tell him that you’d rather he not, his jaw working in odd ways as the twitch in his eye worsens.

“Why ever not?” Kanaya asks incredulously.

They won’t understand the full truth of it, that for a moment you were able to forget your failures and be content that you’d paid for them. You settle for a much simpler, if incomplete explanation.

“Kismesis?” you shrug, wincing as you jostle a possibly-dislocated shoulder.

The horrified look spreads from Karkat to the others in the span of seconds. They try to convince you that it’s a bad idea, that he’s dangerous and unstable. He’ll hurt you, he _has_ hurt you, has humiliated you beyond the normal bounds of kismesissitude. A blackrom with him might very well be your death, Sollux, don’t you understand?

Well, of course. That’s why you’re doing it. If you live, you deserve to be punished. And if you die—well, if you die, then you’ve finally been punished enough.

***

You manage to stay away from him for a week. He’s around, stalking the meteor like a hungry predator and earning nasty looks from the others, but your feeling of calm lasts long enough that you think it might have been a one-time thing.

And then you have the dream, a violent recap of your failures painted in wide splashes of burgundy and fuchsia across your sleeping psyche. You wake up in a cold sweat, tendrils of yellow spreading messily in your recuperacoon. Not even the sopor can help you any more. A quick stop by the ablution trap to wash yourself off and then you’re seeking him out again, not bothering to second-guess yourself. You expected to find him in his room this late in the day but he’s in the ectobiology lab, hands trailing almost lovingly across beakers and vials as he stares into the distance.

Eridan doesn’t realize you’re there, so you get the first hit. Red and blue bolts fly across the room and send him crashing into the table, glass lab implements falling to the floor and shattering. You pin him to the floor with your power but his wand’s in his hands now, and the restraints fizzle into nothingness a second before the collar’s on you again. You’re suddenly being pulled to him by an invisible force, and his mouth is a thin, angry line as he wipes the blood away. You bring up your hands, offering a token resistance of a few punches, but you want this, you need it, you’re only fighting back so he’ll actually do it. His leg hooks behind yours and sweeps you to the floor. Your face hits the ground with a crunch, and his boot swiftly begins grinding it into the glass shards below.

It hurts, it stings and makes you cry, but it doesn’t hurt as much as the feeling of failure that you feel when you’re alone with yourself. You welcome it.

You take him into you blissfully as he ruts into you from behind, his hand fisting in your hair and pulling to arch your back painfully. Harsh grunts and the occasional moan fill the room—your body is pulsing with desire and you can’t hold back your desperate noises. You can’t help it, you’re all kinds of fucked up, but in these moments you can lose yourself in the rush of endorphins. He’s bleeding the hurt from you, you can feel it leaking from your lacerated face in thousands of rivulets of yellow, and you are so, so happy that he hates you enough to do this for you.

It doesn’t take long. Eridan soon pulls you back further as his thrusts sharpen, and his fangs sink into your shoulder as he fills you with the vivid violet that you don’t deserve. He drops you against the floor again and spends a moment on top of you, panting and lazily licking the oozing blood off your back before standing. There’s a soft _zip_ behind you and then he’s gone, leaving you unfinished and wanting.

You heave yourself to a sitting position against the wall with a soft, choked sob. One hand tangles with your bulges, stroking yourself with a painful grip. A few fingers from the other hand enter your nook, and you bring them to your lips to taste Eridan’s genetic material. It’s salty and sweet at the same time. It’s depraved, but you don’t care. None of you can reproduce any more anyways, and even if you could nobody would want to do it with an incompetent yellow-blood. A few more strokes, then your own material is gushing out in pulses between your legs as you suck him off of your fingers. You shudder, and your mind goes blank for a few precious moments.

You don’t hurt any more when you float back to yourself—how long were you gone? you've lost track again—and it’s the work of a few minutes to sweep the mess into your sylladex for later disposal. There’s a small smile on your face as you head for the meteor’s main room. You’ll get some good coding time in today; your thoughts are the clearest they’ve been for a while.

When you enter, Karkat glances up from his computer to see who it is. He turns back to his computer for a second then turns slowly to you again, doing a double-take. Then he’s on his feet and rushing towards you, his hands hovering around your face. You’re confused.

“Oh my fucking—what the fuck, Sollux? Tell me this was some sort of freak accident that happened while you were sleepwalking or so help me—”

His voice trails off as he sees the streak of violet on your lips, and he uses his thumb to wipe it away. Then he’s forcefully sitting you down, bitching nonstop as he pulls out a medical kit and begins extracting shards and chunks of glass from your mangled face. Oh, right. You’d forgotten about that, what with the post-pailing high, but it comes rushing back to you now with every muttered expletive and accompanying removal of glass. You shut your eyes and stay silent, let him keep talking since you know it makes him feel better. Then his voice is loud and sharp in your ear, and you’ve missed what he said. He’s pissed.

“—fucking Kanaya because I can’t do this any more, I am sick and fucking tired of your bullshit, Sollux, and I am not picking you up again after this, so don’t you dare go fucking looking for him again.” He leaves and comes back with Kanaya a few minutes later, then stomps out of the room as he tosses you a final snarling grimace.

Kanaya looks at you quietly for a long moment, and it’s a little unnerving.

“Am I correct in deducing that this is Mr. Ampora’s doing?”

You look away, and it’s enough for her. Her lips draw into a tight line and her nostrils flare, but she begins silently tweezing the final shards from your face with her delicate touch, stopping from time to time to wipe the blood off. She licks it from her fingers when she’s done, and that’s honestly a little terrifying too. She gives you another assessing look, eyes scanning for anything she might have missed. Then there’s a foul-smelling ointment that she rubs in gently, and a wad of bandages, and a painkiller. You’re surprised to feel it working; when the voices were present, the strongest painkillers couldn’t get rid of your migraines.

Her hand comes to rest gently on your arm, and she speaks to you softly before leaving you alone.

“I realize I am not your moirail, Sollux. But if you ever need to talk, I would rather you come to me than go to Eridan.”

***

You don’t. You can’t. She can talk all she wants but you can’t pay for your sins with talk, only with blood and submission. Eridan is the only person who can make you feel anything any more. He lights a burning fire in your body and snuffs it out with his boot, and you’re thankful, disappointed, happy to serve. He’s also the only person that can _stop_ you from feeling when you don’t want to; when your mind wanders to your inadequacies, he’s there to distract you and erase your racing thoughts. Kanaya can’t do that. Maybe Karkat could, but he won’t—he’s stopped trying to help you since the third or fourth time he patched you back up. So you seek refuge in Eridan.

At first you start fights with him on purpose, goading him into taking what he wants from you. But at some point, he realizes that when you come to him you want only one thing, and he gives it to you—takes it from you, rather, and leaves you in a blissful, sobbing heap. There are no words exchanged, no questions asked. He hasn’t finished you since the first time, just leaves with a look of disgust on his face, makes you finish yourself with only your lust and shame as companions. You start to get confused. You deserve to be hit, to be punished. But you like it, and you don’t deserve to get what you like, what makes you feel good. You wrestle with your emotions until you come in a burst of yellow that washes away your doubts. It’s always worth it in the end; it always makes you forget for a while.

***

The looks of disgust morph into hesitance. Eridan won’t hurt you any more unless you put up a hell of a fight, sometimes just walks away and disappears, and you’d rather just submit. He unexpectedly finishes you off again after a session that leaves you wanting more; pushes you against the wall and kisses softly up your neck as his hand tangles in your bulges. His lips are soft against yours, and they swallow the sounds of relief that you make when you come between the two of you.

But he doesn’t leave, he just puts his arms around you and buries his face in your neck. It’s fucking weird. You break the unspoken rule.

“What—” your voice catches, and you clear your throat. “What the fuck are you doing, Eridan?”

He mumbles something into your shoulder and you can’t understand him. You sit in silence for a minute trying to figure out what it was before you ask again.

“Say it again.”

He pushes himself up a bit, and his breath is warm against you, a sharp counterpoint to his ice-cold skin. He’s shaking.

“I said you’re fuckin' pitiful Sol, I can’t _do_ this to you any more, it’s tearin’ me up.”

You’re silent with shock. You _are_ pitiful, but he can’t—he can’t just take this away from you, you need it. You need _him_ , need him to be rough, to hate you more than you hate yourself. You push him away.

“No. No, you hate me, you have to fucking hate me, I’m a fucking failure and you know it—”

He cuts you off with a deep, gentle kiss. His hands roam softly over your battered body, and everything clicks. This is why he’s been hesitant, this is why he’s been more gentle than you need, this is why he’s been seeing you less and less. _No. He’s ripping away the only thing anchoring you to sanity._

Tears slip involuntarily from your eyes and he wipes them away, holding you close for what feels like hours until you can’t cry any more. You protest weakly, a final attempt to save yourself.

“I can’t—I need you to hate me, I need it. Please. I’ll go insane, I can’t take it, Eridan, please don’t do this.” You’re babbling. It’s pitiful and you know it, it’s not helping your cause. You shut up.

“We’ll get through it, Sol.”

No, you _won’t_. You cry again. Long, heaving sobs that rack your frame and his as you cling to him, tears for Feferi and Aradia and your own shameful self. It hurts. It’s killing you that you’ll never be able to stop feeling this way.

Eridan Ampora has broken your mind and body, left you shattered and unconscious, hated you in a thousand tiny ways. But the most hurtful thing he ever did was tell you that he loves you.


End file.
